What I Learned One Weekend — thanks to Twitter!

More and more often it seems that Twitter is becoming my de facto “source of all good bits“. Having all but abandoned my bloated RSS reader a few months ago, I find now that Twitter is filling that desire to keep up with what is going on in the world of libraries, technology and beyond.

I know that many still question the validity of Twitter and others have written it off as simply a place where people share what they had for breakfast. I, however, find it a place where I can get quick links to topics that interest me and keep me current. More than 90% of those I follow are librarians or techies and I purposely keep my following list to a limited number so that noise ratio is never too high for a quick scan to cherry pick the good stuff from the stream. When I have time, I join in on the conversation and that is fulfilling too.

This past weekend I spent quite a bit of time inside due taking care of a sick child. I decided to do a little experiment and make a list of all the really cool and/or educational bits that I encountered over the weekend from Twitter.

Here is a baker’s dozen list of the top links from Saturday and Sunday — provided with minimal commentary, in no particular order:

The 50 Greatest Gadgets of the Past 50 Years: Interesting reading for the gadget lover — and brought back lots of nostaglic memories of gadgets gone by.Talking Points on Library Use : This was not something new to me having used it in the past, but it did remind of several good statistics that can be used when talking about the importance of public libraries (especially crucial at this juncture for many libraries and many states).100 Things Your Kids May Never Know About : The world of technology continues to change at a rapid pace and this article from Wired drives that point home. I really do believe that it will not be long until most children will not even know how to use a road map or atlas and/or use a print encyclopedia given the current usage that these two items get in our reference collection.

Giving up my iPod for a Walkman : A teen boy experiments with using a first generation Walkman. I had a device just like the one he is pictured carrying (which means I am revealing just how old I really am…yikes).

Screenjelly : I have experimented with ScreenToaster as a free online service for screencasting, now it looks like the toast will be getting competition from some jelly. I plan to test this out soon.Amazon, Zappos and Libraries : In this brief blog post the point is eloquently made that for libraries … ” the future isn’t in content, really…it’s in service.” I could not agree more.

Basically, this is just a random sampling of what types of things I discover and learn on Twitter on any given day. I would love it if others shared a “good bit” or even two that they discovered recently thanks to Twitter (or FriendFeed or Facebook or any other social networking site).

I would like to thank those that I follow for providing me with such good links and food for thought on a daily basis. My learning is enriched every day by my “tweeps” — feel free to give a shout-out in the comments and lay claim to the link from your orginal tweet if I posted it above.

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4 Comments

1.April Bunn | July 29, 2009 at 5:59 pm

Thanks for a fun post! I checked out the Teen podcast and the "Getting boys to read" and will be sharing them. Maybe you'll inspire some of us to tweet to share links more as opposed to sharing our daily breakfast menu.🙂 PS- LOVE the graphic of the calculator. Had that same one and it brought back memories!

2.Janie L. Hermann | July 29, 2009 at 8:39 pm

I had that calculator too — it was my first real "gadget". All those link I was sharing about great gadgets, etc got me going on a trip down gadget memory lane. So a professor for learning and for gadgetry… the image.

Yes, tweets of what you ate for breakfast are so yesterday. Give me the good bits!

3.Fiona | July 29, 2009 at 11:22 pm

This is a fantastic post. I am going to put a link to it on my blog. I have a heading 'Helpful Stuff for Teachers and Librarians' and that's where it's going.

Thanks, Fiona🙂

4.Justin The Teen Librarian | July 30, 2009 at 8:02 am

Woah. That's my teen podcast…thank you! I am flattered!

I had that calculator as well, and I believe I still have it somewhere in my boxes of "stuff from the eighties that I just can't get rid of" I'll dig it out sometime.

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